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Grammy winner Mariah Carey, known for her hits “Vision of Love” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” has announced a sad day for her family: her mother Patricia and her sister Alison recently passed away on the same day. Further details, such as the time, place and cause of death of Patricia and Alison, have not been disclosed.

“I am heartbroken to have lost my mother this past weekend,” Carey said in a statement released Monday. “Unfortunately, in a tragic turn of events, my sister also lost her life that same day.”

Carey said she was glad to be able to spend the last week with her mother, who reportedly moved to a nursing facility in Florida several years ago. Carey’s sister Alison died in upstate New York, according to local media.

“I am grateful for everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time,” she added. News of the two women’s deaths was first revealed in an exclusive report by People magazine.

“I feel blessed to have been able to spend the last week with my mother before she passed away,” Mariah told People Magazine. “I am grateful for everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”

The pop superstar did not disclose the cause of death. According to public records, Patricia Carey was 87 years old. In her youth, Patricia was an opera singer.

Alison Carey died at age 63 in a hospice in Greene County, NY, south of Albany, the Times Union reported. The newspaper quoted David Baker, a friend of Alison Carey’s who helped her navigate housing and welfare issues, as saying her death was due to problems with her organ function. She had reportedly suffered from substance abuse.

Carey, 55, has said she has a complicated relationship with her family and that her early childhood was a source of recurring instability. She has linked her past to the very public emotional struggles the singer endured even as her career rose to unusual heights.

Carey has publicly stated that she grew up in a very broken family.

Carey detailed her complicated relationship with her mother and sister in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. In it, she wrote that she and her mother often clashed and she blamed her sister for putting her in unsafe situations as a child.

“Our relationship is a thorny rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment,” Carey wrote in the book about her mother. “A complicated love connects my heart to my mother’s.”

She wrote about her sister that for a while it was “emotionally and physically safer for me to have no contact” with her.

Carey had a close bond with her mother, singing a Christmas medley together in 2010 and spending time with Carey’s young children, but she was reportedly estranged from her sister, who sued Carey over allegations against her in the singer’s 2020 memoir. The meaning of Mariah Carey.

Sources: NPR, People Magazine, BBC.